If the quality of life you experience from your online communication has not improved along with technology for the last 5 to 10 years, you may be missing something from your email service and/or smartphone. Computers of South Dublin can help you install these devices & services and use them to their full potential.

The most common lifestyle problems with email

When computers are set up to read an email account directly, which avoids the clutter, advertising, and inefficiency of webmail, many people face the following problems:

email disappearing from their web mail after downloading

email not downloadable after they've read it on webmail

not being able to see all their email and all their email folders on other computers (home or work) or on mobile devices

when accessing webmail (especially while travelling), not seeing items marked as read, deleted, or put into folders when they return to their computer

Distributed access: your "email makeover"

A proper email setup starts with using an email service that supports synchronisation (IMAP). Gmail is designed for this, whereas other free webmail facilities (Yahoo, Hotmail) and ISP email providers (Eircom, UPC) do not. COSD provides the first step in the solution by creating a Gmail account, if you don't already have one, and merging it with your old email address so you don't lose any messages.

All computers and mobile devices set up to synchronise email with this Gmail account will have the same view of your email, and this email account also becomes a base for synchronising your calendar and contacts as described below. This email account merge, and setting up your computer to syncrhonise with the new account, can be accomplished in a short COSD visit.

Never lose your phone contacts or diary again

The iPhone/iPad and Android phones are designed to sync their calendar and contacts through the Exchange (a "cloud") protocol which is provided free with all Gmail accounts. It's not always clear how to set this up, especially for the iPhone/iPad. COSD can guide you through the setup process, especially if:

your email is already set up on the smartphone, but your view has been different than what you see on the computer or online

you already have contacts on your phone that would otherwise be overwritten by the cloud data

you are switching to a smartphone from a conventional phone, or Blackberry, and need to preserve the contacts or calendar on the phone memory or SIM card

your iPhone/iPad is already set up to back up to Microsoft Outlook through iTunes, and you are switching to the "cloud" backup of your calendar and contacts

What you can expect from a single COSD visit

all your phone contacts & calendar will be safely backed up on the computer continuously, with changes updating in both directions within seconds

your contacts and calendar entries will all be editable on the computer, which helps for copy/pasting lengthy notes

your iPhone/iPad will never have to be plugged into the computer again except to get Apple software upgrades.

Contact COSD for a free email evaluation of your email or smartphone requirement